Declining Population

I am one of the last left in my main PvP guild, as well as my F List is empty. The performance is horrid. And the Health Desyncs are crazy. I could deal with a lot, but the health desync is so discouraging.

But before locks, the problem was that certain players would play Cyrodiil like it's a battleground map.
They didn't give a rat's behind about the objectives or factions, in fact they swapped factions on a daily basis as they saw fit.
Some would switch to the losing side for better fights - but at least as many, if not more, would switch to the winning side for easy gratification, and/or for trolling.

Cyrodiil is an alliance war zone, so being able to switch factions on the fly made absolutely 0 sense.

Of course ZOS still failed to provide viable options for players who have characters in more than 1 alliance. This is not in question, and it's an implementation failure on ZOS' part.

On the bright side, the faction lock system is still being worked on to some extent - as evidenced by the Scalebreaker changes - so maybe that issue will be addressed eventually.

LOL Nope, you do not get it. People play Cyrodiil just as they always have. Just with faction lock instead of hopping on an alt for the faction of friends they want to help they just get their guild to help them so it is two factions against one. It has been this way since the first year of this game. They are many of the same people you accuse of being BG players because it is just easy to classify them as such.

Where you are right is they have a different interest in playing Cyrociil and it is not wrong.

A lot of things are getting pretty tiresome in this game, and many of these things massively outclass faction lock. The performance, as people are relentlessly mentioning, is the main contributing factor to people leaving PvP, or indeed the game altogether. I am tired of being a full health and not even knowing I’m being hit until I’m dead due to lag, or disconnecting, crashing to desktop, generally hating life. It’s difficult to stay committed to and support a game that does not adhere to any kind of mutual ethical contract of supply.

The really disgusting part is all people like me who have poured dozens or hundreds of hours into Cyrodiil characters on a second or third faction. That time is just down the drain. ZOS might as well have deleted half our accounts without as much as an explanation or apology, let alone compensation. Really despicable from a customer service perspective.

All because some people complained on the forums.

I think people get that you don't like faction locks, and that is what you see as a reason for leaving, but seriously, performance has gotten worse; if not actually, then in perception. Faction locks don't matter as much when it's not fun to play the game because of lag and disconnects.

Performance is not worse and not getting worse. It's very bad and it's been very bad for years.

If anything, the declining populations have slightly improved performance.

Anyone citing performance is just trying to cover for factions locks killing Cyrodiil because they don't want to admit it. If it were the performance, population would have died off two or three years ago.

I openly cite performance as the primary issue AND I admit to be a 100% supporter of faction lock. It is not a bad thing at all. I still believe pop decline is folk having had enough of performance.

Performance has always been bad. If the performance was a turn-off for you, you would never have started playing in the first place. It's not like it was something you didn't know about until you already had a big time investment. Performance has been totally horrible for years, including health desynchs, disconnects, and everything else. Anyone who has been in Cyrodiil around primetime even one time in the past 3-4 years would immediately know performance sucks. And if it were a dealbreaker, they'd be done with it then and there.

It's the faction locks.

If performance were going to make people quit, they would have never started playing in the first place.

A lot of things are getting pretty tiresome in this game, and many of these things massively outclass faction lock. The performance, as people are relentlessly mentioning, is the main contributing factor to people leaving PvP, or indeed the game altogether. I am tired of being a full health and not even knowing I’m being hit until I’m dead due to lag, or disconnecting, crashing to desktop, generally hating life. It’s difficult to stay committed to and support a game that does not adhere to any kind of mutual ethical contract of supply.

The really disgusting part is all people like me who have poured dozens or hundreds of hours into Cyrodiil characters on a second or third faction. That time is just down the drain. ZOS might as well have deleted half our accounts without as much as an explanation or apology, let alone compensation. Really despicable from a customer service perspective.

All because some people complained on the forums.

I think people get that you don't like faction locks, and that is what you see as a reason for leaving, but seriously, performance has gotten worse; if not actually, then in perception. Faction locks don't matter as much when it's not fun to play the game because of lag and disconnects.

Performance is not worse and not getting worse. It's very bad and it's been very bad for years.

If anything, the declining populations have slightly improved performance.

Anyone citing performance is just trying to cover for factions locks killing Cyrodiil because they don't want to admit it. If it were the performance, population would have died off two or three years ago.

I openly cite performance as the primary issue AND I admit to be a 100% supporter of faction lock. It is not a bad thing at all. I still believe pop decline is folk having had enough of performance.

Performance has always been bad. If the performance was a turn-off for you, you would never have started playing in the first place. It's not like it was something you didn't know about until you already had a big time investment. Performance has been totally horrible for years, including health desynchs, disconnects, and everything else. Anyone who has been in Cyrodiil around primetime even one time in the past 3-4 years would immediately know performance sucks. And if it were a dealbreaker, they'd be done with it then and there.

It's the faction locks.

If performance were going to make people quit, they would have never started playing in the first place.

It has never been this bad. I have played for 5 years. I play PC NA 30 Day CP, and I can count on one hand the times I have crashed before the Scalebreaker patch. Afterwards I was crashing 5 to 10 times a night. Now with the latest patch it is down to only 2 or 3 times a night, but now it seems I get constant health desync. I stuck with the game through all of the other performance issues, and even built around them. But the crashing and health desync have cut my hours drastically, and I finally unsubbed.

Where you are right is they have a different interest in playing Cyrociil and it is not wrong.

What is "right" or "wrong" in terms of how the game is to be played, is for the developers (ZOS) to decide.
And they have decided that certain kinds of behaviors are not, in fact, acceptable ways of playing their game

I'm really baffled by the whole "play with their friends" argument.
If you have friends on other factions, you can have just as much fun fighting AGAINST each other as WITH each other.

And getting an enemy faction guild to help yours, I'm fine with that kind of thing - because unlike rampant alt hopping, that actually carries with it some elements of risk that would be absent otherwise.
Also you can't formally group with or heal the enemy factions, so there's that too.

Personally I love the faction lock, but I am playing much, much less than I did.
I tend to log in now for the 2 hours that I plan with a few friends, and then immediately log out afterwards (as do most of them).
2 hours is about as much as our poor brains can take of the current state of the game - if we can actually play that is without crashing out.

Previously to this patch a few of us would usually log to different chars (same faction) and play for another hour or two in Cyrodiil, now we just CBA.
The enjoyment is being sucked out of PVP due to lag, glitches and disconnects - all of which have been ever more prevalent recently.

All these people who are complaining because "I can't play with my friends" - I would bet money that what they want to say but don't want to admit is that it has nothing to do with playing with friends. Most of them are just whining because they can no longer make a tactical faction switch when the one they're on initially is getting their ass handed to them.

That's what the faction lock will result in once people have calmed down and gotten over it. It will force people to recruit for a consistent team, and it will force people to become better players rather than just hiding in a zerg. Sometimes it'll be one-sided, but at least the side with the most players won't get reinforcements from all the losers switching over.

(I use the word "losers" literally, not as an insult).

Guild Master of The Pride of Daggerfall, D.C. loyalist and commander of the Cerglings.

The reason I've been posting lately is because I've been reading forums and discord chats to see if the game is worth coming back to. And overwhelmingly, it's not.

It's only been a few months since I last played, but there is a huge list of changes to process. The thing is, it's not just the changes that are relevant, but how they interact with the rest of the game. And the rest of the game is a convoluted mess. How many sets are there now? There must be over 100. I have no idea. I like to have a good grasp of a game I play, and in order to do that, I'll have to reconsider, again, how all the sets interact with all the changes for the 100th time. And the result is an experience that's worse than the game was in 2015. So much effort for a net loss.

Another barrier as a PVP player is PVE. Trial/dungeon sets and weapons are extremely relevant. But I hate PVE. I have for years. I think it's horribly boring. I don't want to spend any time on it anymore. But that puts me at a disadvantage and severely limits viable builds. This wasn't always true in ESO. My first Master weapons and trial sets were PVP rewards.

Stability seems to be at an all time low. Performance still sucks. Ther 30-50% FPS drop bug probably still exists.

Faction locks are irrelevant to me. I feel bad for those affected, but all of my level 50 characters are on the same faction anyway.

I've concluded returning would just be an exercise in frustration. I'd spend 10x more time preparing to do what I enjoy, PVP, than actually PVPing and ultimately it wouldn't give me the experience I enjoyed years ago when the game was closer to its roots and not a horribly convoluted mess that is impossible to balance.

Edited by zyk on September 6, 2019 9:26PM

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you"
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I'll start pvp'ing again soon, once I figure out what works after the most recent changes. Just been developing characters in Pve land for the past few months and building up skill points. Hoping to see the great battles in Cyro when all pops are locked. Fun times!

Since they nerfed the bash builds and Kaal reset, pvp is fun again on Xbox NA in Kaal. Not a lot of lag and the loading screens are a ton better. We are having some epic battles.

I’ve noticed zone chat being more helpful with keep call outs and encouragement and less complaining about how badly AD sucks while they make no effort to defend besieged home keeps. It’s also much more pleasant since I blocked a certain conspiracy theorist, but that’s another matter entirely 😆

All these people who are complaining because "I can't play with my friends" - I would bet money that what they want to say but don't want to admit is that it has nothing to do with playing with friends. Most of them are just whining because they can no longer make a tactical faction switch when the one they're on initially is getting their ass handed to them.

That's what the faction lock will result in once people have calmed down and gotten over it. It will force people to recruit for a consistent team, and it will force people to become better players rather than just hiding in a zerg. Sometimes it'll be one-sided, but at least the side with the most players won't get reinforcements from all the losers switching over.

(I use the word "losers" literally, not as an insult).

I have nothing but EP toons. Never had anything but that faction and never will have another faction.

The reasons I said I haven't been around lately are exactly the reasons that I'm not around lately.

Another barrier as a PVP player is PVE. Trial/dungeon sets and weapons are extremely relevant. But I hate PVE.

I agree, this is SUPER annoying.
Back when I still played PvP regularly (before Elsweyr/Scalebreaker), my PvE interactions were limited to a bare minimum, I'd rarely leave Cyrodiil at all.

But it's very unfortunate that a lot of the gear needed for PvP can only be obtained through PvE.
Especially since the opposite is NOT true - PvE endgame players do not need to PvP to get their gear for vet HM content, they only need to do a small amount of PvP to unlock caltrops/warhorn, and that only needs to be done once per character.

Another barrier as a PVP player is PVE. Trial/dungeon sets and weapons are extremely relevant. But I hate PVE.

I agree, this is SUPER annoying.
Back when I still played PvP regularly (before Elsweyr/Scalebreaker), my PvE interactions were limited to a bare minimum, I'd rarely leave Cyrodiil at all.

I admire all of the people who have stuck with buggy, laggy, and unbalanced Cyrodiil this long, but I don't know how you do it. ESO is not a good game for PVP. The PVP portion of the game is small, limited, and frustrating, and has been for years.

ZOS is doing their best to shore it up. Splitting Imperial City off from Cyrodiil is good. The relationship between IC and Cyrodiil was toxic to both. There was no synergy because they were separate instances with different game play. IC now has new life as a third PVP venue.

Similarly, faction locks being restored to Cyrodiil helps to get closer to what it could have been; a faction-based war game. Cyrodiil is a niche experience, not a mainstream experience. ZOS needs to attract and foster players who are interested in this sort of PVP warfare. Faction locks are a good first step.

None of this matters if they cannot solve performance and game balance problems that plague PVP in this game. People will continue to leave as they reach the peak of their tolerance to these things.

This game is an MMORPG with an emphasis on PVE. If you are interested in dungeons, this game has amassed quite a few of them over the years. If you are interested in questing and adventure, the game is massive. It really is the game to play right now if you are primarily a PVE player.

Faction locks don't matter as much when it's not fun to play the game because of lag and disconnects.

This.

Can't follow hammer in primetime, constantly get "stuck on textures" and killed while unable to move or do anything else. Or get lagged out and disconnected.
Can't port to keep/outpost under attack by a sizable zerg (while it's still yet possible to port to it) -> instant disconnect.
Can't even be in a group, because that causes me to get randomly lagged out and disconnected even in areas where there are very few players around - or sometimes even when I leave Cyrodiil for any reason without leaving group first.

Those performance issues have existed since Beta although they've grown worse as of late, not surprised people take that up now though when Faction-lock comes into the picture. People quit for both reasons although Faction-lock clearly had a bigger impact on population declining.

faction lock has nothing to do with the fact i dont play anymore

The bugs crash freeze glitches loading screen and so on, have reached an amount i just cant take anymore

When you crash all the time, and when you don't get stuck in a graphical object that does not load and all your bars black out + you can't move and have to use "/reloadui" constantly to fix it during a huge keep fight, I can see the turn off. Bonus points if "/reloadui" causes you to die or get disconnected before it ever completes. The "fix" for the crashing is probably one of the worst things to happen to the game in terms of performance.

It's even terribly buggy in PvE situations, at least when it was crashing PvE had good performance on my end...

Fortunately it does not happen often, but when it does, I may observe someone on screen sprinkling a little profanity!

The population on all PvP servers has dropped dramatically since the imposition on faction lock.......need to change something STAT. As a player who has been here since beta, I have toons of all three factions I have carefully curated for PvP, but only those eligible for the 30 day CP campaign have anyone to play with. Well intentioned but poorly executed.

The population has NOT dropped due to faction lock......the simple fact is those who are crashing out every ten min in cyro are beginning to leave since ZOS failed to turn out a reasonably functioning product. To further complicate the matter they refuse to correct the bugs in game as well-- the combination of the two is pushing people out of the game rapidly. The faction locks had almost no impact on those actually playing- they still play all the time. The players who are quitting are doing so because its clear now that ZOS doesn't feel even remotely responsible to put a product out that actually works.